Cato, Clove, and Their AU
by DreamerGirl2245
Summary: There are a lot of 'what if' moments in the Hunger Games. This is one of them. What if Cato had ran faster.   AU, Huger Games spoiler. Better than it sounds. My first Hunger Games fic. Flames will be used to make cookies. I don't own Hunger Games.
1. Chapter 1

**Sorry if you don't think Clove looks like what I describe her as. I'm so sad at whom I had to kill but it had to be done.**

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><p><strong>Chapter One: The Feast.<strong>

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><p>"What'd you do to that little girl? You kill her?" The one person I've feared ever since I saw him kill that bear with a rock, Thresh, yells at me. I scrambled back.<p>

"No! No, it wasn't me!"

"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her?"

"No! No, I-" I saw the rock in his hand. "Cato! Cato!" Hurry Cato. You're way faster now than you were. Please hurry.

"Clove!" I hear his answer. To far away. He'll never make it.

Thresh lifts the rock up to hit me but suddenly he is shoved to the side. I'm dropped and I crumple on the ground.

I close my eyes and focus on the fact that I was alive. Then I hear District Twelve's short scream.

"Clove. Clove are you okay?" I hear a worried sounding voice above me. I open my eyes and look around. I see Thresh lying dying as well as 12 slowly bleeding to death. I feel a ping of sorrow.

"Yeah I'm okay." I answer Cato. Then I stand up and dust myself up. "You know I didn't think you were gonna make it in time." I tell him grabbing all the back packs as Thresh's cannon fires. Without really looking I remove the stuff from all three and shove them into my backpack.

District Twelve's cannon fires and when Cato turns his back I hold three finger of my left hand to my lips and hold them out to the girl on fire. She should have won. She had the skill. But she just had to go and make Cato mad. ".Good-bye girl on fire, Katniss. I'm sorry" I whisper to the invisible friends and family of Katniss Everdeen. See I do this for all my victims just never out loud. I have a heart you know.

"You ready to go Clove?" Cato asks turning back around.

"Yeah, I wanna get out of here." I saying turning away from Katniss and back to Cato to find his staring at me weird.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" He blinks and shakes his head as if I just woke him up.

'No reason. So shall we go find Lover Boy?" I shake my head.

"What District 12 needed was medicine for Peeta. He won't make it another day. We gotta find District 5." Cato nodded. I turned around to look at the arena from here. If I were Ruby **(This is what I named Foxface.)** Where would I be? I turned in a full circle and when I was done I found Cato standing really close.

"Clove, I thought you were gonna die." I suddenly wish all of Panem wasn't watching us. "And all I could think was that if you died I would never get to tell you."

I blinked suddenly forgetting my snappy comment. "Tell me what?"

Cato didn't say anything. He just leaned down and kissed me. I didn't slap him as I would have a little more than a month ago. I kissed him back. After a while we broke apart.

"Well, come on. We gotta go find Ruby." I smirked and ran off toward the lake.

I heard Cato run after me but I was way faster.

I screamed in shock as Ruby suddenly jumped out at me. She landed on my back and sent us both rolling down a hill. We rolled to a stop and I yanked a knife out of my jacket and desperately stabbed at her.

"Clove!" Cato called from the top of the hill seeing where the leaves where disturbed.

"Down here!" I yelled as I stabbed her in the arm and yanked her off of me. She tried to punch me in the face but I grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back until I heard and awful crunching noise. I shoved her away from me and jumped on her. I held her down the same was I had to Katniss.

"Sorry District Five. Looks like you won't have a victor this year." I said simply as I stabbed her through the heart. I learned my lesson about dragging on deaths. I stood up and saw Cato standing there. Her cannon fired. I waved at him.

"Hi there, do I know you?" I asked in an innocent voice. He caught on.

"Hi to you too. But no I don't think so. I'm looking for a friend of mine; she has dirty blonde hair and green eyes. Have you seen her?" I pretended to think.

"Maybe, if her name is Clove she's gonna race you to the top of the hill."

Of course I won.

"So what are we 'gonna do now. The only people left are us and Lover Boy. What are we going to do till he dies?" I shrugged.

"Maybe we should go find him, you know, to give us something to do." I suggested. Cato nodded.

"Okay, let's go."

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><p>We found the cave just before night fall. We would have just walked right past it if we hadn't heard him.<p>

"Katniss? Katniss? Oh sh*t. I'm going to die."

We decided to save him for morning. We made our camp in the woods across the creek thing.

"Clove, what happened to your arm?" Cato asked me a little after sun set. I looked down to see a big gash down my arm. I shrugged.

"It must have happened when Ruby sent me rolling down that hill." I said simply. Cato pulled a first aid fit out of his bag and in a few seconds had it bandaged.

"Thanks." Was my simple reply.

"For what?" he asked. I shrugged again.

"Everything I guess. Keeping me alive this long, saving me from Thresh, sticking up for me when Glimmer and Marvel wanted to ditch me, you know everything." I gave him a kind of half smile. He smiled back and shrugged.

"It's the least I could do, you're my district partner, and you've done some pretty amazing stuff for me too. And you're my best friend. You always have been."

I grinned and remembered something that happened years ago.

"Except when we were seven." That year my sister had gone into the Games and I was mad at the world. I wouldn't even talk to Cato.

He smiled and gave a short laugh, "Except when we were seven." He agreed. "I'll take first watch." He said after I yawned.

I didn't sleep. We were both quite until midnight though.

"Hey, Clove you awake?" Cato voice cut through the silence.

"Yeah. Why what's up?"

"You know I've liked you since we were eleven, right?" he asked.

"Nope, I didn't know that. But now I do. I guess the Games help you learn something."

"Yeah, I guess so."

-Line-

The next morning we were woke up to the sound of a cannon firing. Then a voice spoke up.

"_Upon farther examination the earlier rule change is against the rule book." _

Both of us jumped up and looked at the sky. My mouth hung open. They couldn't do that!

"_But due to demanding from the Capitol Audience, we would like to present the victors of the 74__th__ Hunger Games, Cato Cortes and Clove Elwood District Two." _


	2. Chapter 2

**I you guys want me to write a one-shot about what would have happened if they had made there be only one victor tell me and I will.**

**Also I liked this one because it shows that Clove and Cato have hearts.**

**Sorry its short. I wanted to update.**

**Chapter Two: The Victors.**

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><p>Cato jumped in the air and did a fist pump. I let out a girlish squeal. My face felt like it was going to split in half. After I got done with my happy spazes I jumped to Cato and hugged him.<p>

"You're alive, I'm alive, we're alive." Cato laughed at me.

"Yeah, I guess we are."

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><p>The next thing I knew I was on a train. I was still un-normally happy. I was sitting in a room watching the74th Hunger Games on the TV when Cato came in and sat on the couch beside me. His thumb traced the dark circles under my eyes.<p>

"You haven't been sleeping." He accused me. I shook my head.

"I can't. Every time I try I see that rock coming down on my head and…" I stopped, unable to finish. He sighed.

"It doesn't matter Clove. I got there in time." He tried to comfort me.

"But what if you hadn't? What if he had ki...?" He interrupted me sounding mad now.

"Don't you think I think that all the time? Imagine how I felt when I heard you scream and thought that you where gonna die because I wasn't fast enough! I could see you but I could stop him! And _you _have the guts to be messed up! Imagine if I had been so close and then seen you die! And it would have been _my_ fault! Splitting up was _my _idea!" He yelled at me. I started crying. It seems I'm fragile now.

"Oh, Clove I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry. I didn't mean it." He apologized. I sniffled.

"It's okay." Was all I said. He hugged me.

"Cato, I want my mom." I muttered sounding childish.

"Me too Clove, but don't worry about it. We'll see them soon."

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><p>I jumped out of the train and ran to my mom. She hugged me.<p>

"I'm so proud of you." I smiled

"Thanks mom." I whispered. I heard her sigh.

"You're not a little girl anymore. Clove there is one thing you need to think about. If they had made you, could you have killed Cato? Think hard about that. Remember, the willingness to kill could save you one day." I pulled away.

"Cato is not him mom. I don't have poor judgment like you." I said masking the fact that I didn't know if I could have.

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><p>Victor's Village. The place everyone wants to be. I can't stand the sight of it. All of us running around retelling the moment a tribute was made a victor or the creative ways we killed people, kids.<p>

"I hate it! How can no one feel sorry for that stuff?" I exploded after we got in my house after being congratulated and told story after story when we first arrived. Cato slowly walked toward me.

"Clove clam down your hurting yourself." I looked down at my hand and saw blood seeping through my fingers. I was digging my nails into my hand. I wiped my hand on my pants.

"He loved her Cato. He really, truly did. She was falling in real love with him too. They were like us. They could have..." Cato put a hand over my mouth.

"I know, but he knew he never had a chance and she didn't really think she would either." I shoved his hand away.

"But they could have. So could so many others." I muttered.

Something was wrong with my brain. It is either killer's guilt or survivor's guilt. Whatever it was guilt.


End file.
